Spouses Who Argue Face a Lifetime of Fights

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If you and your spouse argue a lot now, don't expect things to
change as you grow old together. A new study finds that conflict
levels remain relatively unchanged throughout a marriage.

Thankfully, the same goes for happy, conflict-free couples, the
researchers said, adding that spouses who shared decision-making
responsibilities were happier and less likely to divorce.

The study followed nearly 1,000 couples for 20 years. In 1980,
researchers questioned 2,033 married people ages 55 years or
younger about the quality of
their marriage and their relationship with their spouse. The
same couples were interviewed up to five more times through 2000.

Conflict levels were gauged by how often respondents said they
disagreed
with their spouse — never, rarely, sometimes, often or very
often. Based on these results, the researchers categorized the
marriages as high, middle and low conflict.

"There wasn't much change in conflict over time," study
researcher Claire Kamp Dush of Ohio State University said in a
statement. "There was a very slight decrease in the amount of
conflict reported in the final years of the study, which was
slightly larger for the high-conflict couples. Still, the
differences over time were small."

The researchers also used a classification system developed by
psychologists to group marriages into four general types:
volatile, validator, hostile and avoider. About 54 percent of
couples were in the validator marriage category, which consisted
of lower conflict couples who had equal decision-making input.
These individuals also reported high or moderate levels of
happiness and had low
levels of divorce.

"The validator marriages are often seen as positive because
couples are engaged with each other and are happy," Kamp Dush
said. "We found that in these marriages, each partner shared in
decision-making and in housework."

About 6 percent of participants fell into the avoider category:
These low-conflict couples followed traditional gender roles,
with husbands
abstaining from housework and the participants believing in
lifelong marriage.

"People who believe marriage should last forever may also believe
that fighting is just not worth it," Kamp Dush said. "They may be
more likely to just let disagreements go."

About 20 percent of subjects were in volatile marriages, which
were characterized by high conflict and high or moderate levels
of happiness. The remaining participants were in hostile
marriages, with high conflict and low levels of happiness, and
were the most likely to divorce.

The researchers also found that people in low-conflict marriages
were more likely than others to say they shared decision-making
with their spouses.

"That's interesting because you might think that making decisions
jointly would create more opportunities for conflict, but that's
not what we found," Kamp Dush said. "A healthy marriage needs to
have both spouses engaged and invested in the relationship."

The study authors used data from the Marital Instability Over the
Life Course survey, which was conducted by researchers at Penn
State University.

The study will be published in an upcoming edition of the Journal
of Family Issues.

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